Walking Into Darkness
Surreal Girl and I have often walked the water in recent months, but today as the retimed fall of dusk caught us a by surprise, we found ourselves taking a new route and walking into darkness.
I usually love drifting through London, finding the places where the skin of time is taught across the fabric of place and I can feel the pulse of the ghosts of history just below the surface. Tonight it was different.
Once passed the light coming from through the stained-glass of a Magdalen church now hosting the shouts of African revival, the territory began to descend into the type of shadow you rarely find in the sodium lit city. We navigated by the sporadic bursts of moonlight through the clouds and the occasional dim, curtained light from waterside homes reflected in ink-black pools.
As we pushed on, overhead feats of Victorian engineering became troll bridges; daytime certainties of distance evaporated. You lose the will to move forwards when you cannot see what lies ahead and the next destination down the line is a place with the motto that features the Latin word for ‘pray’ (‘orare’) in it. Any spirits of history dwelling here were about as benign as the gangs of semi-drunk children – unseen but heard – beyond the iron railings that tracked the towpath.
The last straw came when even the usually unrelenting Westway seemed so fearful of the darkness ahead it coiled away, leaving us standing beneath the curve of it its mollusc ridges. We turned back. Towards light and warmth, towards a night of my home-cooked pancakes and the much safer and less intense ghosts of Torchwood.
I usually love drifting through London, finding the places where the skin of time is taught across the fabric of place and I can feel the pulse of the ghosts of history just below the surface. Tonight it was different.
Once passed the light coming from through the stained-glass of a Magdalen church now hosting the shouts of African revival, the territory began to descend into the type of shadow you rarely find in the sodium lit city. We navigated by the sporadic bursts of moonlight through the clouds and the occasional dim, curtained light from waterside homes reflected in ink-black pools.
As we pushed on, overhead feats of Victorian engineering became troll bridges; daytime certainties of distance evaporated. You lose the will to move forwards when you cannot see what lies ahead and the next destination down the line is a place with the motto that features the Latin word for ‘pray’ (‘orare’) in it. Any spirits of history dwelling here were about as benign as the gangs of semi-drunk children – unseen but heard – beyond the iron railings that tracked the towpath.
The last straw came when even the usually unrelenting Westway seemed so fearful of the darkness ahead it coiled away, leaving us standing beneath the curve of it its mollusc ridges. We turned back. Towards light and warmth, towards a night of my home-cooked pancakes and the much safer and less intense ghosts of Torchwood.
posted by David at
11:59 PM
2 Comments:
You two "walked the water"? Is this some British reference that has passed me by?
‘Walked the water’ is just my own phrase to describe the wonderful process of walking alongside London’s many rivers and canals.
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